THE SUPREME COURT: SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP

THE SUPREME COURT: SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP; Police Questioning Allowed To the Point of Coercion

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Published: May 28, 2003

WASHINGTON, May 27—
The Supreme Court ruled today that police questioning in the absence of Miranda warnings, even questioning that is overbearing to the point of coercion, does not violate the constitutional protection against compelled self-incrimination, as long as no incriminating statements are introduced at the suspect's trial.

But a person subjected to such questioning can still bring a civil suit against the police for damages for violating the Constitution's guarantee of due process, the court ruled. These two conclusions were expressed in a fractured set of opinions that reflected an intense struggle among the justices to resolve the issues raised by a suit against a police officer in Oxnard, Calif., who persisted in questioning a gravely wounded suspect in his hospital bed despite the suspect's cries of pain and pleas to stop.

The suspect, Oliverio Martinez, was involved in a police shooting that left him blind and paralyzed. He is also suing the Oxnard police for excessive force in the 1997 incident.

As a result of the shifting coalitions on the court that produced tenuous majorities without a single majority rationale for any proposition, Mr. Martinez will be able to pursue a civil rights suit against the officer, Ben Chavez, on 14th Amendment due process grounds, although not on the basis of the Fifth Amendment's right against compelled self-incrimination. How much practical difference the distinction makes remains to be seen.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who along with Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said both bases for suit should be available, wrote in a separate opinion that Mr. Martinez might receive ''much of the essential protection'' from the due process suit he can now pursue as he could from the Fifth Amendment suit he initially sought.

The decision, Chavez v. Martinez, No. 01-1444, overturned a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, that had permitted the suit to proceed on both constitutional claims. As the appeal came to the Supreme Court last year, it appeared to present a rather straightforward issue, whether the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination can be said to be violated when there has been no prosecution and no official use of any incriminating statements.

But the case turned out to be considerably more complex. Argued on Dec. 4, it was the oldest undecided case on the court's docket, for reasons that became apparent as Justice Clarence Thomas announced the result this morning. There were majority judgments but no majority opinion supporting them; instead, six justices wrote opinions that, when patched together, produced a result.

''So you can see I'm a consensus builder,'' Justice Thomas said with a wry smile when he finished providing an oral road map of what had become of the case to which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist had assigned him.

Along with the chief justice and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Antonin Scalia, Justice Thomas found that ''a violation of the constitutional right against self-incrimination occurs only if one has been compelled to be a witness against himself in a criminal case.'' He added that ''the absence of a 'criminal case' in which Martinez was compelled to be a 'witness' against himself defeats his core Fifth Amendment claim.''

Justices David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer largely agreed with this conclusion, voicing their concern in a separate opinion that a contrary conclusion could leave the police liable for civil damage suits for any failure to give Miranda warnings. There were therefore six votes to reject the self-incrimination aspect of the suit.

Justices Kennedy, Stevens and Ginsburg vigorously disagreed. ''Our cases and our legal tradition establish that the self-incrimination clause is a substantive constraint on the conduct of the government, not merely an evidentiary rule governing the work of the courts,'' they said in a dissenting opinion by Justice Kennedy.

Justice Thomas, joined only by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia, also voted to reject the due process aspect. Saying, ''There is no evidence that Chavez acted with a purpose to harm Martinez by intentionally interfering with his medical treatment,'' Justice Thomas said the questioning was justified by the urgency of the situation and did not violate due process. He noted that there was a ''risk that key evidence would have been lost if Martinez had died without the authorities ever hearing his side of the story.''

According to a tape of the questioning, Mr. Martinez said several times that he was dying and begged the officer to leave him alone.

Five justices voted to permit the due process suit to proceed. Justice Stevens said in a separate opinion that the questioning was close to torture and would have ruled for Mr. Martinez on that basis. But he agreed with the other four to let the Ninth Circuit consider the question in a remand.

This meant a 5-to-3 vote to keep the due process question open, and it left Justice O'Connor unaccounted for in this part of the case.